In local politics, it doesn’t take a lot of people to have a visible impact. The average Cambridge City Councillor is elected with around 2000 first place votes on the ranked choice ballot (in a city with a population of 113,000). For most public-facing issues, the number of people making a public comment on the issue numbers only in the single digits. This makes it straightforward for a small set of loud voices to give an impression that there is much more broad support for a set of policy decisions than there actually are....
As I have become more involved in local politics, one of the surprising things to me is how … weird local political issues tend to be.
In a city which is constantly changing, I respect and understand people who are simply scared of change – of change in how a city looks, or who lives there, of change in prices and loss of long-running businesses. No one likes to feel like they are becoming out of place in their own community, especially a community they have lived their entire life....
One of the elements of the Green New Deal which was the most surprising to me was the proposal that we need to electrify the heating of our buildings. This was a complete shock to me: It was something that had genuinely never occurred to me as a part of the effort that we need to work on with regard to climate change. Of course, when you think about it, this makes perfect sense: although I don’t think about it, my house produces carbon not just in the electricity it consumes, but also in the water it heats and the gas it burns to heat the water in my heating pipes....
I had drastically underestimated the extent to which the “Green New Deal” was not a New-Deal for Green, but instead an FDR-style reinvestment in the American people. This isn’t a deal for green, or for energy – this is a new deal for everyone.
The Green New Deal includes provisions for strengthening unions and the right of workers to organize. It includes strengthening labor standards across all industries. It demands an end to the broken promises of the indigenous people of this country....
Over the past two weeks, I have been listening to Ijeoma Oluo’s “So You Want to Talk About Race” in audiobook form. The biggest issue with buying this as an audiobook is that now I’m going to be compelled to buy a physical copy – to highlight, add post-it notes to – and as needed, beat people over the head with until they get it.
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Recently I saw someone ask “What could you really do to eliminate billionaires?” After all, most folks aren’t exactly achieving billionaire status via robbing casino vaults or anything: they get there primarily through wealth acquisition due to large ownership of stock in various companies, usually ones that were created or run by their family members. So, how do you limit the number of billionaires?
Tax Corporations First and foremost, if the primary way people become wealthy is “increase in value of stock”, then the direct answer is “Slow the growth of the stock....
When disaster strikes in Cambridge, residents receive compensation from a “disaster relief” fund which helps provide immediate cash as part of a transition. For example, in response to the recent Cambridge St. fire, each person was given $600 in cash (up to $2400 per household), in addition to resources from disaster relief organizations like the American Red Cross. I support this effort to help ensure that people are able to transition safely to new housing, and I appreciate the city’s effort to maintain these efforts....
One of the priorities for organizing within the Boston DSA this year is “Childwatch and Integenerational Organizing”: focusing on ways to help broaden our range of age ranges participating in our organization.
As part of a set of geographic breakouts, we discussed this with a group of folks from Cambridge specifically at our most recent general meeting. I wanted to capture some of the thoughts I had and shared.
First, if you are interested in in integenerational organizing, do not meet in bars....
Participating in the Boston DSA, I routinely find the organization describing itself as a “big tent” organization. I have always found this claim to be a bit counter to my experiences. The membership I have encountered has typically been extremely narrow in its average age; it has almost no racial diversity; and most of the folks I have interacted with seem to have a heavy bent towards being employed in technical fields....